Overview

 

The structure of the Sekhukhune economy
Conventional wisdom has it that agriculture; mining and tourism are the three leading sectors in the Sekhukhune economy. Official statistics, however, paint a slightly different picture of the District economy being dominated by community services, mining and trade. It must be noted that it is very difficult to find accurate data for the local level in South Africa. Those data-gathering exercises that do exist often yield vastly different accounts of local realities. Most public sector plans and IDPs, however, draw on Stats SA data even whilst recognizing some of its limitations. The table below is drawn from Stats SA data and sets out the main sectoral contributions to Sekhukhune’s Gross Geographic Product (GGP).

Revenue Flows
First, however, this section turns it lens on another salient feature of the Sekhukhune economy – the main revenue flows into and out of the municipal economy. This is captured graphically in the figure below.

The main sectors are indicated as green blocks within the orange oval, which depicts the boundary of the focal area. The arrows indicate the main sources of external income (revenue and investment) flowing into and leaking out of the economy.
What is striking about this picture is that the bulk of revenue flows directly out of the Sekhukhune economy, as many goods and services are supplied from outside the District. As later sections of this IDP will reveal, this reality has led to the District prioritizing certain interventions that will see the retention of revenue within the District.

Source: Stats SA (2001)
What the data reveals is that in 2000, the Sekhukhune economy depended largely on public sector funding with community services being a major factor in the area.
The three main contributors to GGP were community services (52%), mining (20%) and trade (17%).Despite these findings, the District has very consciously chosen to explore the potential of mining, agriculture and tourism as key contributors to the Sekhukhune economy up to the year 2025. This is also in recognition of the fact that thriving local economies should not depend overly on public sector injections of income. These 3 key sectors, as well as others highlighted in the table above, are presented in the next sub-section.

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